The rulebooks are being torn up as world financial markets have this week been thrown into fresh Pandemonium after Greece missed its deficit target, sums up Gamal Nkrumah Put down the paper and ponder the implications of capitalism's inability to shake off the global economic meltdown. Can you imagine a depression graver than the Great Depression? Europe is drowning in debt and millions of Europeans will lose their life savings. Meanwhile, the size of the bankers' bonuses are ballooning and their retirement package deals are fast multiplying. A crisis of capitalism is in the making. A showdown is imminent. Across the Atlantic, in America, one million homes are foreclosing. Many homeowners have nowhere to go and are living in their cars. For the bankers it is all about money and as far as politicians are concerned, they don't care about people. And, it's not nice living on the streets. Especially when the winter chill sets in. The game of global finance is as dirty as hell. It has been triggered off by a binge of questionable financial practices. The international meltdown is a harsh indictment of the global financial system. Bankers don't seem to have a conscience and the people have decided to strike the fear of God into them. Americans are fighting back against foreclosures. People are treated like chattel. And, they are struggling in vain to rebuild their shattered lives. The events of the past few months are reminiscent of the financial crisis of 2008 when the US economy was spiralling downwards and backwards. George Soros says the situation today is even worse, and he should know. The question uppermost in most American people's minds is what US taxpayers are getting for their hard-earned money. In 2008, the US government bailed out some of the biggest banks and financial institutions in the world. It amounted to the biggest welfare cheque in history and that was paid to Wall Street's richest bankers and not to America's poorest and most vulnerable. The American malaise is contagious and Greece is the tip of the European iceberg. Greece's reality began to hit home the day after the eurozone ministers meeting in Luxembourg. In the Grand Duchy, eurozone ministers ruled out Greek default. Greece is urged to speed up the privatisation of its state-owned assets. Eurozone ministers understand that the Greek economic crisis is not just about Greece and the Greek economic mess. Avoiding contagion is uppermost on their agenda. Even as the eurozone policymakers pondered the economic and financial future of Greece, shares in Belgium's largest bank in terms of assets, Dexia, plunged to an all time low. The French and Belgian governments promptly announced that they will bailout Dexia. The two governments already did so back in 2008. The volatility of the eurozone markets only highlights the interconnections of the global financial system. Just shifting debt from one balance sheet to another is no permanent solution to the international financial crisis. Greece has witnessed nonstop protests over cutbacks in the past year. The Greek malaise is contagious too. Anti-Wall Street protesters in New York and other American cities are angry about the developments and that they are forced to bailout the bankers. Manhattan's Financial District social networking site "Occupy Wall Street" is up in arms. It is directly inspired by the Tahrir Square protests in the wake of Egypt's 25 January revolution. What happened to the Californian Dream? It obviously was just an illusion. And, what happened to the American Dream? Yet an even bigger hanky-panky, pie-in-the sky deception. The American and European public are fed up with their unscrupulous bankers' humbuggery. The largest single stockmarket point drop in history was recorded recently. Film director and activist Michael Moore, a permanent fixture of the anti-Wall Street protest movement, described the dire situation in no uncertain terms. His lamentation was a poignant reminder of the sordid history of trickery and treachery of the powerful in the US, and of the need for stick-to-it-iveness. "Look, we got rid of slavery in 1863 in this country. It wasn't until the 1960s that you saw the large marches and the voting rights and the civil rights act being passed. Women couldn't vote until 1920, and then you didn't have the real women's liberation movement until the 1960s and 1970s," Moore mused. And, whatever happened to boosting aggregate demand or tweaking the economies of richer nations in a growth-friendly direction? If I remember my economics correctly, that does not necessarily entail doing away altogether with structural budget deficits. Greece's mounting public deficits are an expression of the rotten financial system of the wider world. So what became of Greece's $157 billion bailout? So is Greece to stick to its highly unpopular austerity plans, with some tweaks? What will the troika do about the Greek tragedy? Greek workers face dismissal. Older workers approaching retirement are being laid off and unceremoniously sacked. Eurozone ministers meeting in Luxembourg urged Greece to speed up privatisation but their strategy has become unstuck. This is no cruel parody, but a typically European accusatory attitude. "Every country must clean its own mess," German Chancellor Angela Merkel remonstrated with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Eventually the arguments determine the evidence rather than the other way round. People in Greece traditionally refused to pay their taxes with impunity. In America only the wealthiest habitually do so. Is recapitalising the Greek financial system therefore a credible answer to the current Greek tragedy? Eurozone policymakers pretend that Western nations with considerable fiscal space can relax their various austerity drives. Tax collection, a perennial problem in Greece and a headache for successive Greek governments. Stocks across Asia this week slid in response to the Greek crisis. Such facts and figures provide a barometer as to where Greece is economically, socially and politically. Surely, recapitalising the financial system is insufficient. The sacking of older workers, the half-hearted hiking of property taxes, slashing pensions will not do, and will not wash with the Greek populace. Certainly the contention that money can be found by cutting public spending is controversial and will inevitably lead to increased social and political unrest worldwide. Yet one cannot in good faith deny that Margaret Thatcher's economic, social and political legacy in Britain was indeed toxic. And, so was Ronald Reagan's in America. Yes, it is easy to claim that the technicalities are complicated. But are they? It is curious that discussions on the eurozone crisis has focussed more on what cannot be done that on what can be done. Lenin's What Is to be Done, springs to mind. The temptation is to shrug off yet another global financial crisis since the world recovered temporarily from the 2008 meltdown. Errors and setbacks abound. "Forty-six million people are living in poverty right now in the United States. That's an absolute crime, it's immoral. And these guys are just posting the largest profits ever this year," lambasted Moore. In 2009, United States President Barack Obama lashed out at Wall Street, dubbing bankers "fat cats" who "don't get it", in an escalation of tensions with the "industry". Obama pledged to attempt to persuade bankers to free up more credit to businesses, with the aim of boosting job growth. But the president also expressed frustration with banks that the government had assisted. But, here is a word of warning. The leftist juggernaut MoveOn.org, a Democratic Party front which vehemently backed Obama's 2008 election campaign, is set to hijack the otherwise leaderless "Occupy Wall Street" protests this week, which is pretty ironic given the fact that the Obama administration is the creation of Wall Street itself and has let Wall Street carry on fleecing Americans and the world for that matter for the past three years, despite all his talk about fat cats. The Occupy Wall Street protest led a march in New York that blocked passage to the Brooklyn Bridge. The demonstrations are aimed at protesting against corporate greed and corruption. Moore gave them voice: "You're right, where's the rage? Where's the uprising? It's starting. It's down right now on Wall Street. It starts with the young people. But this is going to grow because people watching this tonight, people are afraid that they're going to be foreclosed on this year, don't know if they're going to be out of a job next year, can't afford the medical bills for their kids. Fifty million people still without insurance. They're sitting home right now going, god, I wish I could do something. What can I do? Somebody has got to start it somewhere. That's what these kids have done down in Wall Street. It's going to spread across the country. And believe you me, I won't have -- it won't be because of anything I say or you say or this show or those kids down there, people already feel it. They're sick and tired of it." Will this spontaneous outbreak of angst be hijacked and neutered or will it become, like the anger of Egyptians, the backbone of a new social contract. Already there is talk of making Occupy Wall Street a permanent organisation. There's no question that Obama's attempts to paper over his dismal first term record will go nowhere, nor will his left and working class constituency stick by him blindly. Liberal Democrats are even talking about supporting Republican Ron Paul, who wants to slash "defence" spending and bring the banks to heel, things that Obama once vaguely promised and then promptly forgot about.
